Update: Missing attachments fix in Ver. 6.9.1

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Hi everyone. I wanted to provide an update to those of you that encountered an issue where data has been missing from certain notes on Evernote for Mac.

We've released an updated version of Evernote for Mac, version 6.9.1, to resolve this. Please open Evernote and navigate to Evernote > Check for updates… to get this latest version. If you are using the Mac App Store version of Evernote, this new release has been submitted for approval with Apple, and is estimated at being available for download from the App Store next week.

Installing Evernote 6.9.1 will prevent this issue from happening from now on, but it will not retroactively restore the notes that have missing content. For those notes, please use note history to restore them.

Note history will take periodic "snapshots" of your notes even if you are a Basic or Plus user. If you are unable to access note history, please let me know here or direct message me and we will be able to get this into a support ticket and provide temporary access to it.

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The fix is in this current version, 6.9.1. I edited the post title for the sake of clarity.

2 hours ago, BSR said:

We've released an updated version of Evernote for Mac, version 6.9.1, to resolve this. Please open Evernote and navigate to Evernote > Check for updates… to get this latest version. If you are using the Mac App Store version of Evernote, this new release has been submitted for approval with Apple, and is estimated at being available for download from the App Store next week.

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Is there a way to find out which notes may have been affected by this? I've got backups and I've got the note history, but I certainly don't want to go through 20,000 notes to figure out which ones may have lost content.

EDIT: Damn. It looks like I've got a bunch of notes that seem to have once had attachments, but now no longer do (several hundred? thousand?). Well this is sure going to be good for the PhD research. Some of those typed notes had the PDF attached, and some didn't - and I certainly don't remember which ones were which.

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@Metrodon: The fix applies to all versions moving forward, so it will be included in version 6.10 and all future versions.

17 hours ago, ibrown said:

Is there a way to find out which notes may have been affected by this? I've got backups and I've got the note history, but I certainly don't want to go through 20,000 notes to figure out which ones may have lost content.

You should be able to find notes with resources in Search using the following search operator:

resource:

resource:application/pdf will return all notes that contain a PDF file.

resource:image/jpeg will return all notes containing an embedded JPEG image.

resource:audio/* will return all notes that contain some type of audio file.

1

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What was the cause of this bug? It might help to know what made it happen, in terms of tracking down notes that were affected. I.e. if it was notes in certain types of notebooks, opened in the iOS client instead of the Mac one, etc ...

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What was the cause of this bug? It might help to know what made it happen, in terms of tracking down notes that were affected. I.e. if it was notes in certain types of notebooks, opened in the iOS client instead of the Mac one, etc ...

+1 We need to know more details about under what conditions the bug would occur, and which versions of Evernote were affected. Was it just a single version of Evernote or has the bug been out there for a while? Would it only happen if you edited the note, or would simply upgrading to one of the affected versions cause the problem on an unknown quantity of notes? Will the resource search mentioned above work even if the attachment is missing? (Seems like if the attachment is missing that it would no longer have said resource, so it wouldn't be found by that search, but correct me if I'm wrong.) Also, is that different from just typing "attachments" into the search bar?

A bug that corrupts data should be treated with the same delicacy as a password hack. I would expect to see a blog post with a postmortem (how it happened, why it won't happen again, how seriously you're taking it), but at the very least we should have the aforementioned details.

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@ibrown - You can open a support ticket to have our Customer Support team look into which notes in your account may have been affected by this bug.

@E-NoteForum & @firstknight - This bug occurred in the version of Evernote for Mac released in September, and less frequently in versions released since June. In these versions, certain sequences of events, such as skimming quickly through a large number of notes, may have caused an image or other attachments to be deleted from a note without warning. Text in notes were not affected. If you received an email from Evernote indicating your account was identified as being affected by this bug, you can submit a support ticket using the green link above to have our Customer Support team help identify the affected notes. If you didn't receive an email, your account was not affected by this bug.

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I would have thought you would be able to escalate / accelerate Apple's review for a data-loss bug.

I'm running the latest version of El Capitan (10.11.6) on a late 2012 Macbook Pro Retina, in case it makes a difference.

When I navigate to the Evernote page in the app store I do see the same version as in the image that you posted, however, when I check for updates, there is nothing since the last Evernote update in September. I tried to upload a screen shot but the size limit is <0.5Mb (so low as to be a bit useless) as the screenshot is >2Mb.

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You should be able to find notes with resources in Search using the following search operator:

resource:

resource:application/pdf will return all notes that contain a PDF file.

resource:image/jpeg will return all notes containing an embedded JPEG image.

resource:audio/* will return all notes that contain some type of audio file.

Thanks, but unfortunately that approach isn't working for me. That search is only showing notes that currently have attachments - not the notes that used to have attachments, but have lost them.

I've filed a support ticket.

I've gone though some notes, and man, it's a hassle. I see if there's even a previous version and history (and sometimes there isn't, which I find a little suspicious - I thought some of those attachment-less notes had attachments). Import from history. It's in a new notebook. See if the imported note is any different from the current note. If so, move that back into the correct notebook. Clean up the incorrect note.

Do we have a definite time for when these problems started? I've got exact backups from about four weeks ago, and another from about six weeks ago, and time machine going back who knows who long. I'm still thinking of exporting all notes I've updated in the past month, "resetting" Evernote back a month, and then importing all the newer notes. But lord knows what that would do to syncing.

Note that I don't know when my notes lost their attachments - maybe a week ago, maybe a year ago. It was just by chance that I noticed this was a problem a few weeks ago, but who knows how long it had been an issue.

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@amanda_h I rebooted as you suggested and went to the App store, and I was finally presented with the Evernote update. Thanks for the tip - I'll try restarting if this happens in the future. Not used to having to restart to fix a problem on my Mac.

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@E-NoteForum & @firstknight - This bug occurred in the version of Evernote for Mac released in September, and less frequently in versions released since June. In these versions, certain sequences of events, such as skimming quickly through a large number of notes, may have caused an image or other attachments to be deleted from a note without warning. Text in notes were not affected. If you received an email from Evernote indicating your account was identified as being affected by this bug, you can submit a support ticket using the green link above to have our Customer Support team help identify the affected notes. If you didn't receive an email, your account was not affected by this bug.

My wife and I were affected by this bug in a shared notebook. I even opened a support ticket on it, but we haven't received such an email despite our account definitely being affected on the one note where I noticed it (though who knows how many others may have been affected).

Are other users slipping through the cracks with these notifications as well?

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My wife and I were affected by this bug in a shared notebook. I even opened a support ticket on it, but we haven't received such an email despite our account definitely being affected on the one note where I noticed it (though who knows how many others may have been affected).

Are other users slipping through the cracks with these notifications as well?

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My wife and I were affected by this bug in a shared notebook. I even opened a support ticket on it, but we haven't received such an email despite our account definitely being affected on the one note where I noticed it (though who knows how many others may have been affected).

Are other users slipping through the cracks with these notifications as well?

Hi @E-NoteForum, I made an account as I have just had your same issue. In our case, entire notes have disappeared (not their attachments / content), no matter if they had attachments or not. Has Evernote solved your issue? I have just opened a ticket, too.